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RandomDorm is a new site that's following in the footsteps of the
explosively popular random video chat service
Chatroulette, but adding its own twist: it's for college students only. To use RandomDorm, you
need a .edu email address or a Facebook account with a .edu address as the primary email.
RandomDorm is also limited to the US right now (it's "geotarded," as Lee is fond of saying).
Despite the word "Random" in the name, RandomDorm definitely offers a much smaller variety of
characters than Chatroulette. Half the fun of Chatroulette is meeting pranksters and talking to
folks in other countries. Randomdorm is definitely about as heavily male as Chatroulette, but so
far I've noticed much less full frontal male nudity. I consider this a plus, but tastes may
vary.
What might really help RandomDorm take off is the dating angle. Chatroulette has gained unexpected
traction as a matchmaking site, with people even posting Chatroulette missed connections all over
the web. Well, take that and narrow the pool to college students ... it's bound to be a dating
goldmine. No surprise, then, that RandomDorm was developed by the creators of GoodCrush, a
matchmaking site.
Mac
users of Google Chrome finally got a
solid bookmark system in Google Chrome...but the dev team isn't stopping there, of course. In the
last week or so, several updates have been made to the Chromium source code which will bring a
better -- and more Chrome-y -- bookmark manager to the browser.
The new 'tabbed bookmark manager' currently looks like what you see in the screenshot. Rather than
spawning a new application window as Google Chrome does, the new version opens alongside your
current set of tabs (like the new tab page). Items can be dragged and dropped and you can create
new folders and items via the tools menu. You can also sort and search your bookmarks.
The manager can also be accessed by typing chrome://bookmarks in your Omnibar,
though I wasn't able to set it as my new tab page -- Chromium simply loaded the default one
instead.
While the update is a welcome one for Windows, Mac, and Linux users of Chrome, it is an ideal
feature for Google Chrome OS. Spawning additional windows isn't the best UX decision on a
browser-based operating system.
Like most new additions to Google Chrome, the new bookmark manager is only currently available in
the Chromium buildbot releases. Download a
current snapshot build and try it for yourself, or check out a screencast after the
break!
With the
final release of Ubuntu 10.04 due in just
under a month, things appear to be right on schedule at Canonical. Yesterday the Lucid beta download page went live and eager testers
rapidly descended upon the mirrors.
Watching Lucid evolve has been exciting. It's clear that Canonical is intent on creating a version
of Ubuntu which can appeal to a broader base of computer users with a more select set of default
programs, new visuals, built-in easy access to social networks via Gwibber, and loads of other
improvements.
One key addition to the beta is Wubi. If you're not familiar with it, Wubi is a Windows program
which allows you to install Ubuntu on the same drive as your Windows install. It's an extremely
simple way to take Ubuntu for a test drive -- or make it a permanent fixture on your
system. With the
final release of Ubuntu 10.04 due in just
under a month, things appear to be right on schedule at Canonical. Yesterday the Lucid beta download page went live and eager testers
rapidly descended upon the mirrors.
Watching Lucid evolve has been exciting. It's clear that Canonical is intent on creating a version
of Ubuntu which can appeal to a broader base of computer users with a more select set of default
programs, new visuals, built-in easy access to social networks via Gwibber, and loads of other
improvements.
One key addition to the beta is Wubi. If you're not familiar with it, Wubi is a Windows program
which allows you to install Ubuntu on the same drive as your Windows install. It's an extremely
simple way to take Ubuntu for a test drive -- or make it a permanent fixture on your system.
I spoke to Brian Alvey, co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. and the guy who built Blogsmith -- the same
engine Download Squad, TUAW, Engadget and our other blogs use) about his newest creation: Crowd Fusion. There are quite a few CMS products to choose from
out there, but Crowd Fusion is built to perform at scale while boasting an impressive feature set.
That's because Brian knows a thing or two about scale! Having had the experience of watching
Engadget and TUAW cover Steve Jobs keynotes and CES and Detroit Auto Show (Autoblog also uses
Blogsmith), not to mention Brian's early gigs building industry-grade sites, the team at Crowd
Fusion has experience when it comes to building rock-solid CMS tools that enable content
programmers to do just about anything they can imagine. If it sounds like I'm gushing it's not
because I used to work (somewhat indirectly) for Brian -- it's because I've seen what Crowd Fusion can do. You can see it too on this demo from TC50 last September. You can
also join the open source beta program to test Crowd
Fusion out for yourself. Share
Erez
dove into Lifeyo recently, so I won't duplicate his efforts here. But I should say that
Lifeyo makes building snazzy websites exceptionally easy and it
does it for free. If you want your own domain name on your site, it's just $30 a year. That's a
great bargain considering the quality of the pages it creates and the ease with which it creates
them. Try them out yourself and see.
If you're
someone who has to take a lot of meetings, you've undoubtedly run into scheduling issues at some
point and had to reschedule one . Google Calendar just added a new feature that you can enable in
Labs to make the process a lot easier (if your company uses Google Calendar). Smart
Rescheduler looks at other Google Calendars that have been shared with you and creates a ranked
list of the best times to reschedule.
It's a great idea in theory -- it even deals with room conflicts! -- but what works for the Google
Calendar team might not work for everyone. As you might expect, they all use Google
Calendar. However, if the people you're meeting with are on some other calendar software, Smart
Rescheduler won't have enough data to do its job. I really like the concept, though, and it adds to
a growing stack of reasons to get on board with Google Calendar.
It's already
been pretty widely reported that Internet Explorer 9 will feature better
support for standards -- including HTML5. We
also know it's going to take advantage of your GPU via Direct2D and DirectWire. Now, a blog post
from the folks at AMD has revealed the IE9 will support Direct2D hardware acceleration for the
<canvas> element.
Here's what AMD's Robin Maffeo had
to say: "The MSHTML rendering layer has been enhanced to use Direct2D and DirectWrite instead
of GDI. Direct2D enables GPU accelerated 2D graphics and text, and allows sub-pixel positioning. In
addition, the GPU is used for scaling (bitmaps are mapped to textures), which is ideal for zooming
and moving images around the screen. This GPU support translates directly into improved readability
of pages, more precise placement of text and images, and smooth scrolling and zooming.
[...]The <canvas> element will be accelerated on the GPU via Direct2D and will enable
hardware accelerated rendering contexts for application development, improving visual display,
reducing CPU usage, and improving power usage."
That's great news if it's accurate, since <canvas> enables all kinds of graphical goodness --
everything from that 2D jigsaw puzzle you see above to more complex gaming graphics rendered
on-the-fly. As Maffeo puts it, "more fully utilizing the underlying hardware platform allows the
development of rich graphical interactions (using HTML5 and JavaScript) that were not previously
feasible."
If you enjoy the ongoing browser war, brace yourself for an exciting 2010.
Sebastian
is out stomping the fjords in Norway -- true story! -- so I'll be your humble replacement columnist
this week. Fortunately, I 'm inheriting a pretty easy job, because there's plenty of interesting
Firefox news to discuss today.Just pretend I'm writing all of this in my poor approximation of a
British accent, and Seb will be back before you know it.
Okay, here goes ...
1. The Contacts Add-on
I wrote about this on Download Squad
earlier in the week, but it's worth mentioning here, too. Mozilla has a created a browser-wide
contacts extension that syncs with your address books and social sites. Why is it cool? Well, how
does having access to your contacts on any website grab you? How about browser-wide email
autocomplete? Mozilla's new Contacts add-on is a pretty sweet deal, and you can grab a preliminary version
now.
2. Mozilla escalates the HTML5 open video battle
As you may know, Mozilla has taken Firefox down the path of open HTML5 video, but in a different
direction than Webkit browsers like Safari and Chrome are headed. Instead of the H.264 video
format, Mozilla is backing OGG Theora. This is both more open (because H.264 is proprietary, and
Theora's open source) and cheaper for Mozilla (because it avoids H.264 licensing fees).
Who the heck uses Theora for HTML5 video, though? Well, starting this week, Wikipedia
does. It's not exactly YouTube, but it's good news for Firefox fans that one of the most
popular (and most democratic) sites on the web has endorsed Mozilla's video format of
choice. Share3. The End of Firefox
3.0!
It's been a good run, Firefox 3.0, but it's time to let go. The final security and stability update
ever for FF3.0, version 3.0.19, will come out on March 30. Considering how long 3.5 has
been stable, and how much progress 3.6 and even 4.0 have made, it's about time everybody moved on
up from 3.0. This quick update cycle is why we love Firefox, though! Look how long it took
Microsoft to stop supporting IE6. Feel free to point, laugh and gloat.
4. Mozilla testing awesome Account Manager
Last week, Lee checked out an experimental
login manager add-on for Firefox that makes logging in and out of websites a snap. It's not
quite ready yet -- it worked for Lee on Facebook, but not Google -- but when this thing gets up to
speed, it'll be a big boost to both security and user experience. Knowing at a glance whether
you're logged in to the webpage you're visiting? Yes, please!
5. Hey, remember those Firefox icons?
Last time I wrote this column, I put out a call for your Firefox icons, and you came through!
Sebastian never got around to posting them, though, so I'm taking this opportunity to present some
of the coolest submissions here. Thanks to everyone who left a comment.
And, to the guy who sent in the Opera icon, ha ha, very funny.
That's the Five for this week, foxy boys and girls! Have a good weekend, and look forward
to the return of everybody's favorite sassy Brit, Sebastian, either next week or the week
after.
Google Chrome's Incognito mode is a
handy way to browse without leaving unwanted traces of your activitybehind. It comes with some
minor sacrifices, of course -- your theme doesn't display and your extensions don't work, for
example.
At least your extensions don't work for now.
Soon enough you'll have the ability to specify which extensions you want Google Chrome to allow
while you browse Incognito. The change has landed in recent Chromium builds, and I have no doubt
that we'll see this make the jump to Chrome's developer and beta channels fairly soon.
While it will be nice to have certain extensions available -- like LastPass (so I don't have to type in all my
passwords) or
ExtensionFM (so I can listen to my music library in the cloud) -- it's important to remember
that some extensions may do things that you're trying to avoid during private browsing sessions. In
fact, Chrome/Chromium will spawn an alert saying "Chromium cannot prevent this extension from
recording your browsing data" when you place a check in the allow box.
For now, you'll need to download a build
from the Chromium BuildBot stash to try this out. So far, so good. I haven't experienced any
(additional) instability or crashing due to enabling a few extensions in Incognito mode.
Share
Earlier today, Google pushed updates to both the Chrome beta and dev channels. The good news? Apart
from other minor patches and fixes users of both testing versions on Windows 7 now see per-tab
taskbar thumbnail previews.
If you haven't received the update yet, you can force a check by clicking the wrench menu and then
"About Google Chrome." Downloads are also available from Google's early access channels page.
It's not without bugs, though. @keshav and I have both had
a glitch which seems to occur when using win+d to show the desktop where tiny windows will appear
along the top of your taskbar (pic after the jump). I've also
experienced a problem similar to the one which plagued Firefox when support for this feature was
first added: the spinning blue circle. It seems to occur mostly when (wait for it)...an
uncooperative Flash embed appears on a web page.
Dan Kantor
knows the web, and he knows music. Better still, he knows how to make the two play nicely together.
If you're not familiar with his work, Dan built Spinner --
AOL's popular music site -- when he was part of our family.
Now he's on his own, and he's got a new musical marvel to share: ExtensionFM. While using the extension inside Google Chrome is fun
enough, it's easy to see just how cool it's going to be on the Google Chrome OS smartbooks and
tablets that are due out later this year.
The concept behind ExntensionFM is a simple one: scan the webpages you browse for embedded MP3s and
build a library of tunes inside your browser. You can also put together playlists, and the music
will keep streaming in the background as you happily (or unhappily, depending on your modus
operandi) surf the web.
ExtensionFM also provides listings of artists and albums in your library, and a list of the sites
you've listened to -- which adds a whole 'nother layer of cool. Once you've grabbed a track from a
particular site, ExtensionFM keeps tabs on it for you. We'll have more on this after the break,
along with more screenshots and Dan's screencast! Right now, I've got
some 2 Skinnee Js queued up from Archive.org, with some SXSM tracks from Sam Roberts on deck. Play
controls are always within reach -- just click the ExtensionFM button in your browser actions area.
Now, back to
that 'subscription' thing...Sites in your library are set to auto-update by default -- which you
can disable on a per-site basis if you prefer to update things manually. Right click and hit
refresh to do a quick check for new tunes. You can also play or queue entire sites, or delete them
if your tastes have changed. I've played with
ExtensionFM in Hexxeh's builds of Chromium
OS -- the source of Google's upcoming Chrome
OS. To me, there's no question that this will be an absolutely killer extension for your
Chromebook (or tablet). It's an awesome, easy-to-use bridge between all the great, free music in
the cloud and your lightweight browser OS.
So what's next for ExtensionFM? I mentioned to Dan the possibility of using Chrome's bsync
abilities to store your library in the cloud, and he said they've been pondering that already.
Doing so would give you log-in-anywhere access to your music...Anywhere including, say, an Android
handset -- where it wouldn't be a big stretch to tap into Google's APIs to give you
music-on-the-go.
"We want exfm to be the only player you need," Dan told me. They're well on the way to achieving
that goal: ExtensionFM is pure awesome.
Right now, ExtensionFM is in closed beta. If you want in on
the action, head over to our
Facebook page -- or share this post on Twitter and make sure you @downloadsquad!
YouTube has had some troubles in the past with labels asking them to remove music
videos and generally giving them a hard time for users infringing copyrights. But users are
still looking for music on YouTube, and now YouTube has found a way to embrace this and help out
budding musicians in the process via their new Musicians Wanted program. Musicians and bands on the
program get paid when their videos are played, even when they're embedded on other sites.
Not everyone can get in on the program; you have to be accepted, and you need to post actual
videos, as opposed to MP3s with still frames. Also, it's US-only for now, which is a bit of a drag.
I hope it goes global soon.
After the fold you can watch Pomplamoose, one of my favorite bands and one of the first to get on
the program, introduce it. And you can read more about the program over at the official YouTube
blog.
Take a
car. Put in a black box, hooked into the horn and the ignition. On the other end of the box, put a
website (connected wirelessly). Let employees use the site to honk the car's horn remotely or
prevent it from starting.
Reads rather like a nerdy college prank, doesn't it? I'm afraid this is actually a commercial
system, deployed on thousands of cars, used to "get the attention of
consumers delinquent in their auto payments". In other words, this is trouble just waiting to
happen. And indeed, trouble struck. Allegedly, a disgruntled employee by the name of Omar
Ramos-Lopez was fired, and then logged onto the system using another user's credentials to wreak
said havoc. He targeted specific cars at first, but then found out he could go through them
alphabetically and went on like that for about a hundred cars. Much fairer that way, I guess.
That's just one good reason to pay for your car in full (or get one without a web-connected black
box!).
As some of you may have noticed, the new Ubuntu
theme for 10.4 features the window buttons on the "wrong side" (left). This has caused quite
the storm in a teacup.
It turns out some people feel strongly about this point, even though you apparently would
be able to change it later (on a per-user basis, as a preference). This presents Mark Shuttleworth
(head of Ubuntu) with an interesting situation: what do you do when some of your users are up in
arms about a decision? This is open-source, after all, and it's often very "democratic" (read: "the
noisiest people get what they want").
The trouble with democracy in the open-source world is that the result is often muddled and
mediocre. That "happy medium" isn't all too happy after all; the companies with the gutsiest (and
often, least democratic) decision-making processes are those which often take the lead. And if
you're thinking Apple, you're not the only one.
So Shuttleworth took the following stand on the Ubuntu mailing list:
"We all make Ubuntu, but we do not all make all of it. In other words, we delegate well. We
have a kernel team, and they make kernel decisions. You don't get to make kernel decisions unless
you're in that kernel team. You can file bugs and comment, and engage, but you don't get to
second-guess their decisions. We have a security team. They get to make decisions about security.
You don't get to see a lot of what they see unless you're on that team. We have processes to help
make sure we're doing a good job of delegation, but being an open community is not the same as
saying everybody has a say in everything."
He then further added:
"No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But we are not voting on
design decisions."
This is not all he said; you can read the rest at the original post over at
Webupd8.org. The rest of it makes perfect sense to me, too. Seeing Shuttleworth take such a
clear and brave stand helps me understand part of what makes Ubuntu the most popular distribution
today. Kudos.
In
the ongoing web video wars -- which have started to look a lot like Flash vs. Everything Else --
the latest battleground could be Wikipedia. A coalition of forces, including Mozilla, the Open
Video Alliance, Miro and Kaltura (which is the video partner for Wikimedia), has launched a site
called Let's Get Video on Wikipedia.
The site calls for video submissions to Wikipedia, and points out that "Wikipedia uses a 100% free
and open source video stack powered by HTML5 and Theora. The articles are free to share and reuse,
there's no advertising, and the software that runs the site is free and open source." Miro has even
launched a video converter for Mac and
Windows, so you can easily get your videos into the open format and contribute them to
Wikipedia.
The new campaign specifically rails against propriety video technologies like Flash and even H.264,
which is a competitor to Theora in the HTML5 video field. No surprise that Mozilla's involved,
here. A major site adopting Theora gives a big boost to Mozilla's philosophical and financial
decision not to license H.264 for Firefox.
PayPal had a nice booth at SXSW and was there to promote their API and developer
platform, which now allows developers (hint: mobile developers, prayers answered) to enable
PayPal's e-commerce solution within their apps. They were also there promoting their new iPhone app, which allows you to
manage your PayPal account and send money to merchants or friends. Here's my chat with Francesco
Rovetta, Director of PayPal Mobile.
Lovers of privacy and of "not doing evil", rejoice!
The Google Analytics team just
announced they are working on a browser-based opt-out mechanism. In simple terms, this means
that a user could install an add-on or a plug-in and simply say "I don't want Analytics to track
me, ever". Bam -- done deal. No more Analytics tracking for said user on any site.
I think this is a brilliant PR move on the part of Google. Out of a 100% of all browser users, how
many know add-ons exist? How many are aware of Analytics? Out of those, how many would go through
the trouble of locating and installing anti-Analytics for their browser? I'm guessing is comes down
to less than 0.5% of all users. So it's a total win for Google here; privacy lovers can't whine
because it's really the only Analytics suite with selective opt-out (to the best of my knowledge,
anyway) while on the whole, Analytics won't be affected at all. Genius.
The short version: Windows 7 SP1 will pretty much just be a rollup of updates that
have been previously released. Yay.
The slightly longer version: there will be other 'minor' updates, including
support for a kicked-up remote desktop client (using RemoteFX) and Dynamic Memory support. Both of
those are Windows Server technologies, so
they're not of much interest to anyone running Windows 7 at home.
SP1 does historically act as a 'green light' to system administrators that it's OK to upgrade to
the new OS, but according to Brandon LeBlanc that hasn't been the case this time around. In his
words, "Many organizations are already in the process of deploying and are receiving benefits from
their Windows 7 deployment."
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to watch more blocky videos...
Say hello to Sunny Thaper, production director
for Forty Agency, and Saul Colt, lead evangelist at Thoora. They are regular SXSW attendees (and all-around awesome dudes) and give
their thoughts on this year's event. For added atmosphere, I added a real, live foursquare game
being held outside of the convention center, and a taste of the crowds you see inside.
I'm going to file this one under "social commentary", actually. Linkbait Generator is a pretty interesting tool I
found over at the always-interesting MakeUseOf.
It does one thing, and does it quite well: generate titles for blog posts that will probably get
clicks.
For some reason, people seem to be obsessed with lists. If you go to Digg's "Popular" page, you are sure to find at least one list
(right now I see "10 Ways Women turn Men Off"). But it's more than just lists; there seems to be
one simple formula that gets clicks. I think that's kind of sad, really, but it's true. Linkbait
Generator lets you capitalize on that formula by generating titles (and ideas) for posts that are
likely to get clicks.
If you already have something you'd like to write a post about, you can feed it in a textbox (not
shown in the screenshot above), and get ideas. I put in "jogging" and got "The top 7 scariest
videos of all time about jogging". I am positive that if I'd write a post like that, it would get
tons of clicks. Sad, yet very useful for bloggers who rely on clicks for a living (or extra
income). Share
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Mac
users of 
With the
final release of 
It's already
been pretty widely reported that 
Sebastian
is out stomping the fjords in Norway -- true story! -- so I'll be your humble replacement columnist
this week. Fortunately, I 'm inheriting a pretty easy job, because there's plenty of interesting
Firefox news to discuss today.Just pretend I'm writing all of this in my poor approximation of a
British accent, and Seb will be back before you know it.
Earlier today, Google pushed updates to both the Chrome beta and dev channels. The good news? Apart
from other minor patches and fixes users of both testing versions on Windows 7 now see per-tab
taskbar thumbnail previews.
I've also
experienced a problem similar to the one which plagued Firefox when support for this feature was
first added: the spinning blue circle. It seems to occur mostly when (wait for it)...an
uncooperative Flash embed appears on a web page.
Right now, I've got
some 2 Skinnee Js queued up from Archive.org, with some SXSM tracks from Sam Roberts on deck. Play
controls are always within reach -- just click the ExtensionFM button in your browser actions area.
Now, back to
that 'subscription' thing...Sites in your library are set to auto-update by default -- which you
can disable on a per-site basis if you prefer to update things manually. Right click and hit
refresh to do a quick check for new tunes. You can also play or queue entire sites, or delete them
if your tastes have changed. 
I've played with
ExtensionFM in 
Recommandations
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